High-living UMass Medical School employee allegedly stole $3.4 million in state funds

He was a $46,000-a-year financial analyst in an obscure office of the University of Massachusetts Medical School who somehow managed to drive a Porsche, collect Salvador Dali paintings, and build a palatial home for himself. When people asked about his sudden, showy, affluence, Leo Villani would explain that he had inherited money.

But it turns out that Villani was quietly stealing nearly $3.4 million from payments intended for the state Medicaid insurance program over the past five years, an internal investigation has found, in what may be the biggest theft by a state employee in more than a decade.

Officials at the Worcester medical school discovered the alleged scam only after Villani died in a car accident and they found he had been diverting funds.